


the acceleration of gravity

by beastinpeace



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastinpeace/pseuds/beastinpeace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily returns to Bristol after being away for several years to find that very little has changed, least of all herself.   Very loose canon, set around the period of Skins Fire, but disregards the Emily/Naomi reconciliation at the end of season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. going backwards

**Author's Note:**

> So I originally posted this on LJ a million years ago under a different title, when S4 aired, and took it down after I abandoned it (and fandom) completely. But then Skins: Fire happened, and I realised my original concept lined up quite nicely with select parts of canon, so I'm re-writing it to suit. See if I get any further with it this time around.

**Prologue**

The sky is dark today; it’s heavy, like your mood. It looms low over the landscape which flickers past like a film reel -- each telegraph pole punctuating each new frame, as you watch your journey along the M4 play out before you like a movie you can’t rewind.

It has a gravity to it, home. You were so sure that it was just some sentimental notion -- _home is where the heart is_ , or some bollocks -- but halfway around the world, you could feel the tug of its orbit, just as you feel it now. It’s drawing you back.

The closer you get, the more the tightness in your chest dissipates, and you think, bitterly, that it feels more like resignation than relief. A silent recognition that this is the inevitable conclusion of a journey that took you everywhere and nowhere all at once.

You look around at the sad figures that surround you, sandwiched tightly together on this bus that’s going nowhere. You’d feel sorry for them, but they’re doing better than you are, you think as the view outside of the grimy window slowly morphs into something you’re beginning to recognise.

You might as well be going backwards.

\---

You go away and expect everything to have changed, but on the surface, it all looks the same. It’s the scale of the city that has shifted -- you feel like a stranger in a strange land, and wonder, vaguely, if it’s not you that is irreversibly altered. The thought conjures images of spring cleaning -- of the day you found a dusty box of your childhood belongings (the ones that a covetous twin hadn’t destroyed or claimed), and remember how these objects were at once so familiar and so foreign. You remember how the toys seemed like miniatures; they felt so tiny in your hands, so fragile where they had once been substantial. Returning feels the same way, and it reminds you, yet again that you are different than you once were.

Even so, you remember things as they were five years ago, and stupidly get off at the bus stop near your old house on Dibstall Road and curse yourself for forgetting, muttering all the way as you trudge your heavy pack to the other side of town.

You see familiar faces in the passers-by, and realise only on the second glance that they are not the faces that you thought they were. It jars you to remember that so many of the people you knew back then have moved away or are just plain gone. You even think you see _her_ once or twice, think you catch glimpses out of the corner of your eye, but as far as you know, she doesn’t live here anymore and wouldn’t want to see you anyway. She has probably moved on and wouldn’t care to be found, and you’re not even sure you have the energy to try.

\---

  

**Chapter 1**

The garage door is open, of course, and your dad is in there, clattering around with some new fitness contraption or another when he spots you slouching up the drive.

“Emsy!” he exclaims, looking up, tripping over himself and knocking over his tools as he comes jogging out to meet you. “Jenna, love,” he yells back at the house, “Quick! Emsy’s come home!”

You barely manage to drop your rucksack from your shoulders, offer a smile and a “Hi, Dad,” before you’re pulled into a tight hug. It feels good; it’s the most normal you’ve felt since stepping foot inside city limits after three and a half years. He hasn’t changed, not a hair, though you note how his Fitch Fitness t-shirt is more worn than the last time you saw him in it. You suppose he hasn’t printed new ones since the business went under, although he evidently hasn’t quite let go. You relax into the hug and are thankful that he will never change -- he will always be the same bumbling man-child who will always smell vaguely of sweat and floral fabric softener, and who will always, _always_ be excited to see you.

He releases you from his vice grip after several long seconds and you step back, only then noticing the cool figure of your mother over his shoulder, leaning up against the house, silently regarding the scene in front of her.

“So you decided to come home,” she greets you, and the hug she offers has none of the warmth of your dad’s. You nod into her shoulder before pulling away, standing awkwardly opposite her.

“You’ve lost weight,” she remarks, and you shrug. “Well, best get some food into you,” she starts, gesturing towards the house, “Come in, then. Come in.”

\---

Your mum’s cooking, it seems, is another constant in a household that (despite your mum’s refusal to acknowledge it) thrives on conflict and upheaval. You find it oddly comforting to know that it hasn’t yet, and may never improve. Tonight’s offering is a thin broth that tastes vaguely of celery and ham, and a soggy quiche with altogether too much tinned asparagus. Your dad, of course, thinks it’s mint.

You manage to yawn and nod your way through dinner with nothing of great consequence being said, your parents mostly talking quietly to one another, and your dad cooing over the food. When they do address you, for the most part they mercifully keep the conversation light -- Katie is at work, and apparently hasn’t yet had the inclination to move out, and James is, not surprisingly, at Gordon Macpherson’s. Your dad inquires after your most recent destinations, those since your last postcard, and, at this, your mum thinly veils her displeasure at your overall lack of correspondence.

When she can no longer contain herself, she sighs, and fixes you with a stony gaze, “To be honest, Emily, I don’t even really know what to say to you,” reproach not absent from her tone.

You decide to retreat, rather than engage. “Don’t start, okay?” you plead tiredly, “I’m exhausted. Is it okay if I go up and get some sleep?” at which she continues to look on expectantly until you add, “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

Thankfully, she relinquishes, and motions toward the stairs, “There are still two beds in Katie’s room.”

You don’t miss the subtle barb, but choose, for tonight, to ignore it. You kiss your dad on the cheek and head towards the stairs, ascending with heavy limbs towards your old room.

\---

It’s strange being back in here. It was barely your room at all -- you really only lived in this house in the brief window between breaking your stasis at Naomi’s and leaving Bristol altogether. There are still two beds, though, on opposite sides of the room -- Katie’s under the window, the other against the inside wall, neatly made and untouched. That corner of the room, your corner, is almost like a dollhouse, a diorama. The bedspread isn’t one you recognise, and you think it seems fitting, even now, that while she didn’t remove it completely, _Emily’s Bed_ has to conform with the whole that is _Katie’s Room_. This room is unmistakably Katie’s, though it is tidier and more grown up than a Katie three years ago would have it (gone are the posters and photo collages), but you regard the room like it is a stranger’s. You let your fingers trace over perfume bottles, make-up, jewellery, a dog-eared copy of _Gone with the Wind,_ as though trying to re-learn the essentials of the girl you once knew as intuitively as you once knew yourself.

\---

You are vaguely aware of someone bustling about in the dark, but it’s her unmistakable petulant huff that wakes you up.

”Fucking nice, this is. You disappear for god knows how long and then come back unannounced and just, like, move back in or something,” she begins without so much as a greeting, and you hear her stumble, followed by the dull thud of her heels being dropped to the floor.

“This is my room too,” you reply hoarsely, rubbing your eyes with your wrist as you sit up, noting that you are fully clothed on top of the blankets, ”sort of.”

“Not for, like, two years or whatever,” she counters, crossing from the centre of the room and flicking on the light, “you’re just bloody lucky I didn’t throw your bed out with the rest of the stuff you left behind.”

You just nod and sit on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with your elbows on your knees while your eyes adjust to the light.

“Well?” she asks, and you raise your eyebrows questioningly.

“Fuck sakes,” she mutters, beginning to sound exasperated, and all but lunges toward you. “Come here you stupid cow,” she exhales before pulling you up roughly into a tight hug.

You close your eyes and relax against her, and it’s strange, you think, how you fit together like this. You were never perfect compliments, twins never are, you suppose, and you and Katie were never quite alike enough to get along. You are mirror images of one another; you have always been at odds.

“Christ, you’re a bit bloody skinny,” she remarks as she pulls away, giving you the once over, “Ems, you look a bit shit, babes.”

You nod again and regard her silently.

Katie is brassier than when you left. Bronzed. Every inch of her is polished, primped and preened, and she seems to cast an artificial golden glow around her. It’s a bit of a stark contrast to your grown out, sun bleached hair and freckled skin. You look down at your faded black jeans and worn out canvas sneakers. Once you’d have forgiven people for mistaking you for one another. Today you’d be surprised if you were recognised as sisters, let alone twins.

“And what about you?” you ask, and she looks taken aback and ready to take the offensive, “You look like a bloody tangerine.”

“I what? Graham says I look well fit,” she shrieks, glancing down to adjust her tits as a retort.

“Graham?” you ask in surprise, “From mum’s work?”

“Yeah,” she replies, suddenly coy, “from work.”

Your shock is palpable, but you say nothing as you sit back on the edge of the bed.

“Yeah, well,” she continues, scarcely concealing the challenge behind her eyes, “I needed a job, didn’t I? The wedding planning went to shit, and you fucked off. One of us had to help out mum and dad. How else is dad going to reopen the gym?”

“He wants to reopen the gym?” you ask, no less surprised.

She looks at you like you’ve grown a second head, “Christ sakes, Em,” she scoffs, throwing her hands up, “he’s been planning this for ages.”

“I’ve been away,” you answer simply.

“Yeah, I fucking noticed.”

“I’m back now, Katie,” you say firmly, looking her right in the eye, “can we please just try and get along?”

She’s still standing in the centre of the room, and she regards you for a long time, “I fucking missed you, you know?”

“I know,” you reply, letting your head drop down into your hands, still able to feel her watching you from across the room. “I missed you too,” you finally tell her, and it’s true enough, when you say it.

She relaxes then, and turns off the light, shuffles around until you hear her getting into bed.

“Goodnight, Ems,” she says softly.

“Goodnight.”

After a long pause, she sighs, “Next time, say goodbye, alright?”

\---

\---

It’s funny, you think, standing in the kitchen doorway some days later, how comfortable you are being on the outside looking in, and you wonder when it was that you came to be a stranger in your own house. It’s not a new feeling, you realise, as you watch your family carrying out their morning ritual -- your mum and Katie are making coffee and toast respectively, dancing around one another with their movements choreographed. While they are clearly much closer now, in some ways you have always felt like this.

Your dad is trying unsuccessfully to help James tie his school tie, and Katie turns to watch and laughs. It’s a picture perfect little family, much to your surprise, and you can see no place for yourself in it. You are musing on that thought when your mother looks up, her eyes going steely when she sees you, her smile stiff.

“Good morning, Emily,” she says to you with a formality that has no place in her relationship with Katie, and you wonder, now more than ever, if you are truly strangers to one another. You mumble a response and shuffle to the coffee pot, then stare quietly into your cup as they bustle about you.

“Any plans for the day, love?” your Dad asks.

“Like a job hunt,” Katie suggests derisively, and your mum chimes in, coolly noting that Katie pays rent, these days.

“Yeah, maybe,” you sigh, standing to exit the kitchen, “I’m going for a walk.”

\---

When you trace it all back, you find it impossible to pinpoint where it all went so wrong between you and your mum; between you and Katie. You wonder if it all happened in those first six minutes, the ones in which Katie was out greeting the world and you were yet to enter it. Your mum is always so quick to remind you that you are the younger twin, that you are the introvert, the sensitive one. The one who was speeding down a dangerous path and who could never make the right decisions for herself. The one who kept secrets and told lies.

And your mum has good instincts about people, that’s the worst part. It simultaneously stings that she doesn’t know you at all, and fills you with dread that one day she will actually be proven right. You remember the day of that tragic barbeque, when Naomi had shouted, for all the world to hear, the admission of what she had done. The blow of the public declaration, the worst one -- that a girl had died because of her callous rejection -- was nothing compared to knowing that your mother now knew the truth. That, really, she had been right all along.

And it makes you wonder -- you’ve wondered every day since selling your moped and buying your ticket out of here -- if it was all your fault; if there was a point, in all of that, where you could have just said _stop_.

There was really nothing you could have done, though. So much back then was so far out of your control that you couldn’t even tell if it was you that was spiralling down, or if everything was crashing down around you.

\---

You’re broken out of your reverie when you become aware of a familiar figure taking a seat beside you, and it goes part way to confirming your suspicion that if you sit on the same park bench long enough, you will see the whole world pass you by.

”You could have at least stayed for the funeral,” is how she greets you, and you’re not taken aback, not really. You never would have expected pleasantries and a hug, not from Effy.

“I know,” you answer with a bowed head, “and I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need,” she replies, “it’s water under the bridge.”

You catch her eye briefly, before turning away again, taking a long drag from your fag, “Is it?”

She nods soberly, “Some things just need to be.”

You’d forgotten, in the time you’d been away, just how sage Effy can be, how she can cut you down to size with just the simplest of statements. She’d lost the plot not long before you went away, but had been slowly improving. She was getting back on track when things took a turn and got so much worse. You regard her silently out of the corner of your eye, wondering how, three years after losing Freddie, she could make it all sound so simple.

“I wasn’t a very good friend to you,” you admit quietly, after a long pause.

“You had other things going on,” she offers, turning to face you, plucking the cigarette from your fingers.

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“No,” she admits, “but I had people around me. I had Panda and Katie,” she pauses then, “I had Naomi.”

You can feel her scrutinising your profile, those blue eyes always searching, seeking out little cracks that she can weasel through to get to the rotten core of things. You wonder what it is she finds there, and you wonder what she brings back with her. Perhaps, you think, this is Effy’s sickness: morbid fascination.

When you don’t respond, she continues, “And anyway, what could you have done?”

Of course you wish it was that simple, you really do. She’s right, really -- you were stuck in your own mess, and didn’t have a place in hers. You’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out what you could have done differently, how things could have turned out better, for everyone, only to realise that, ultimately, there was just too much that was out of your hands. That none of it was your doing in the first place.

You shrug off the question and glance sideways at her, “How are you now?”

“Back on the rails, you could say,” she answers matter-of-factly, her tone light.

You nod, “I’m pleased to hear it.”

And again you feel those eyes boring into you, “Are you?”

You look at her then, solemnly, wearily, and shake your head, “I’ve just been away.”

“And now you’re back.” It’s a statement, not a question, but you respond all the same.

“Yes.”

She just nods, and finally faces away from you, “So I see.”

There is silence then between you, and it hangs heavily. You have come to learn with Effy, that there is always more that is left unsaid.

Finally, though, it is Effy who breaks the silence, “She’s not here with me, you know.”

You look at her, perplexed, “Who?”

“Naomi.”

“Why would she be with you?”

Effy smiles easily, as she explains, “We’re flatmates in London, I thought you knew.”

You shake your head, “I don’t know anything, really.”

“She hasn’t been home in a while,” she adds, and at this you simply nod as she continues. “Said she might visit her mum next month, if she doesn’t book many gigs.”

It’s strange to hear Effy volunteer so much information unbidden, and you wonder vaguely what she’s asking from you in return. You wonder at her last point, but stay silent. Finally, she asks a direct question, “Are you really not going to ask about her?”

“No,” you answer simply, and you can feel her waiting for you to continue, so you elaborate. “It’s done Effy, it’s over. We’ve hurt each other too much.”

“So you admit that you hurt her, then?”

Your gaze turns sceptical, “Do you have an opinion?”

“I’m not offering one.”

“You are though, aren’t you?” you contest gently, and she smiles her acerbic smile. “You think both parties were at fault.”

“Aren’t they always?

You exhale roughly though your nose and let your head fall forward in frustration. “Yeah, I suppose they are.”

Silence falls on you both yet again, and you are left swimming in your own head.

“You should see her,” she prompts gently, and you smile bitterly.

“Why?” you ask. ”After all this time, what does it matter?”

She holds your gaze and then falters. “You should she her,” she repeats firmly at the ground, and stubs out the fag you’ve been sharing.

Your eyes narrow, but you leave it be. “How long are you in town?” you finally ask, placing another cigarette between your lips to ease your discomfort.

“Until Sunday,” she answers, extending her hand for the fag you’re offering, “to see mum and have the quarterly review at the loony bin.” Her smile is ironic, “The usual shit.”

You smile back, “Will I see you before you head home?”

“I hope so,” she says earnestly, and you believe her.

There is something in her expression that warms you, and the sensation reminds you of what it feels like to be in the company of people who just know you.

“Yeah,” you smile sadly, realising that Effy may just be the only person left who could really make that claim, “me too.”

\---

 


	2. inhabited by ghosts

 

She couldn’t even look at you when she ended it, just stared blankly at her closed bedroom door, right before she walked out through it. “My mum’s coming back next week,” she’d told you, “maybe you should go.”

It wasn’t the most absolute of statements, but it was the only push you really needed.

You were out of there within hours, which meant packing your rucksack and moving into your dad’s bloody caravan. Later you moved into a rundown rowhouse in the dodgy part of town that you now call your family home. Later still, you left Bristol altogether.

Of course, she wasn’t the only reason you left, far from it, but she was enough of a catalyst. She was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

You had clung to one another so fiercely in the months before you left. Naomi held to you so tightly as a way to alleviate her guilt, as though her refusal to let you go would one day invalidate all of the times and ways she had pushed you away.

And you stayed. You just stayed. You stayed out of stupid pride, refusing to surrender what you had fought so hard to win. You had sacrificed so much face, embarrassed yourself time and time again, shrugged off so much hurt, that walking away was a humiliation you couldn’t take. You stayed, knowing that your continuing presence, your unwillingness to yield, your inability to forgive (this time, at least) would be enough to let her drive herself mad.

“I’ll do anything,” she had promised, and you knew instantly that there was nothing that could be done. But still, you walked back in through the front door, back into her house (it was yours once, too, however briefly), and waited around for your pound of flesh. Watched her fall to pieces. You took as much as she had to give, knowing all the while that whatever she had left, it could never be enough.

\---

“Why did you leave, Ems?” Katie’s voice, small and childlike, cuts through the darkness of the bedroom. You blink, realising only then that your eyes are already open, that you have been staring out into the void of your darkened ceiling for some time now.

It’s funny how Katie always does this. For all of her frankness and bravado, she is always the one to tell secrets in the dark. Ever since you were kids, you have never really had a candid conversation in the daylight. Daytime, to Katie, is for facades and social graces.

Your eyes flick to the alarm clock on your side table -- it hasn’t been set, and it flashes zeroes at you. The power must have gone out while you were away and no one has bothered to reset the time. It’s funny how you notice these things, and how you frame them with your absence. How they somehow feel like manifestations of the space you left behind.

In the garden a sapling you planted has died and stands lifeless, yet to be dug up. In your nightstand, a diary from the year you left is filled with engagements that you weren’t here to attend. Under your bed lives a box of secrets that are no longer worth being kept secret.

All of these little things add up to remind you that you haven’t been around, that you left this all behind. That you turned your back, and what you returned to isn’t home anymore, not really.

You roll onto your side to face her, peering across the darkened bedroom towards her silhouette. You note the beginnings of a dull orange glow through the window, and suppose it must be around three in the morning.

“Lots of reasons,” you finally answer, and hear her sharp inhalation, as though she had forgotten the question was hanging in the air.

You hear blankets rustle and see her outline turn towards you, but she doesn’t answer. You imagine her chewing her bottom lip, examining you across the darkness, waiting for you to elaborate.

It makes your head hurt to think about it, all of the reasons that led you to leave. All of the tiny, tiny wounds that added up to create this incessant, dull throb. You think about that girl, the version of yourself that you let manifest out of complacency, that you didn’t have the strength of will to reinvent. Even after your image was no longer an uncomfortable imitation of Katie's, you were still stuck in old patterns, still made the same mistakes again and again. Had regrets that you could no longer stomach, and couldn’t begin to undo.

You flop roughly onto your back and screw your eyes shut. “I don’t know, Katie,” you exhale, “I just couldn’t stand to be here anymore. Things just weren’t right,” you shake your head, “and they weren’t getting better.”

“What things?” she asks, “You’d moved home. You just didn’t give it a chance.”

You push yourself up on your elbows to look at her. “It wasn’t that Katie. Moving home didn’t help. It wasn’t just--” you trail off before you say her name, not wanting to have that conversation. Not wanting Katie to go off on a tangent about _that bitch who broke your heart_. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop being that person,” you tell her vaguely.

“What person, Ems?” she challenges, and you can hear the edge to her voice. You are walking on eggshells, and you know it. You don’t have the words to explain that your insides felt like sour milk -- the longer you stayed, the more they stagnated and curdled.

“The one that was nobody if I was separate from you,” you tell her cautiously. “Separate from everyone here, really.”

“What?” she rises, “You left to become a somebody?”

“No, Katie,” you murmur, “that’s obviously not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?” she asks, sitting up to mirror you.

“I needed to be somewhere that I wasn’t stuck _being_ a certain way.”

She scoffs, “And what way was that?”

You release a frustrated breath. “Unhappy,” you say, more loudly than you mean to.

She opens her mouth to respond, but you cut her off.

“And,” you continue, “I need to be Emily without being _Katie’s sister_. That is a start, at least,” you run your fingers roughly through your hair. “You know this Katie. I’ve told you this before.”

“What?” she bites back, “We’re twins. You don’t think it’s the same for me?”

You shake your head and exhale, try to keep your voice even, “No,” you tell her quietly, “No, Katie, not really.”

“Whatever,” she scoffs. “No one was forcing you to do anything you didn’t want. You were being a right stubborn cow, actually,” she informs you, “So I don’t see how pissing off out of town made any bloody difference.”

“I’m not blaming you, Katie,” you reply gently.

“Well, all I’m saying,” she begins, calming slightly, “is I don’t know what the fuck you were running away from.” She lays back down and stares up at the ceiling, “You were making a lot of stupid decisions all on your own; no one was making them for you.”

You sigh wearily and let your body fall back into the mattress, “Don’t you think that’s exactly the point?”

She’s silent then, as your words sink in. “So, what?” she finally asks, “You probably just took all of your bullshit with you.”

“Yeah,” you answer, “I know.”

“So what was the point then?”

You shrug in the darkness and shake your head, feeling the prick of tears as the room grows stagnant.

After long silent minutes, her voice pierces the darkness again, “Ems?” she rouses you quietly.

“Mm?” you hum.

“Why did you come back, then?” she asks, “Why now?”

You shake your head, again, into the darkness, “I don’t know.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

You sigh heavily, and press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. “No,” you tell her solemnly, squinting at the first insipid beams of daylight that filter in through the window. “No, I don’t think I did.”

\---

\---

“So, you’re the doormat, then?” Effy had asked you on the first day of college, and you supposed that yes, you probably were.

You had spent a large chunk of the morning mooning over Naomi in the gym, only to have Katie spit caustic lezzer jibes in her direction, firmly bringing you back to reality.

The whole thing had started right before middle school had broken for the summer, the last summer before college. Katie had dragged you out to a party to celebrate the end of one chapter, and the beginning of the next. It hadn’t taken long for you to grow tired of it all (of Katie’s short leash, and her ever increasing tendency to use you as the foil for her jokes) and to find your way into the garden, away from the boisterous crowd and the noise. You wrapped yourself in the humid air outside, and let the heavy throb of distant bass pulse deep inside your chest.

She was out there, of course, sitting on the grass, leaning back on her hands with her legs stretched out in front of her. You remember wondering why she was here at all -- she didn’t have many friends and didn’t seem the sort for this kind of fun.

She didn’t start when you cleared your throat (she’d heard you, perhaps, crossing the grass) and just tilted her head back lazily and hummed a quiet acknowledgement. You'd swallowed on noticing the thin sheen of sweat on her neck, and stared openly, grateful for the cloak of night.

“Do you want to sit?” she’d asked after several long seconds, letting her eyes fall to the ground where your feet had settled beside her. You’d hesitated, shuffled from side to side until she shifted her gaze, slowly, elevating it to meet your eye.

“Go on, then,” she prompted, tapping the ash off her fag and nodding her head at the empty space beside her. Finally, when you managed spur life back into your limbs, you complied, lowering yourself slowly to the ground to sit cross-legged at her left.

“Fucking awful party,” was the first thing you’d thought to say, “I don’t even know why I came.”

“Because of your sister,” she'd said simply, glancing at you sideways, and your cheeks warmed in recognition of the fact that she had distinguished you, correctly, from Katie.

“Why did you come?” you asked, feeling bold, and she shrugged, turning to face you.

“Dunno,” she smiled, a soft and ironic smile, “I was invited, so I came.”

She turned away, then, to take another drag, and you sat together in a comfortable silence that she broke long moments later, “Do you want some?” she asked, offering you an open can of warm cider that you'd happily accepted.

Later, when the cider had settled comfortably in your stomach, and you let the lightness in your head take you over, you leaned in close to her -- brought your face close to hers, just to see.

When rumours started to get around that _the other Fitch twin_ had been seen snogging Naomi Campbell in the garden, your confrontation with Katie led to a lie that grew, even after you later revealed the truth:

That Naomi had started all of this. That this was all her fault from the beginning.

\---

Eventually, you find yourself down by the lake. You tell yourself it’s because you need fresh air -- your hair smells like fryer grease, and you (not for the first time in the past week) question your haste at accepting the first job you stumbled upon at the local chip shop. It’s only a couple of days a week thankfully -- enough to get your mum and Katie off your back, and little enough that you have time to reacquaint yourself with the city.

You’ve been doing this a lot lately, just ambling about, revisiting old haunts, stirring up memories, but of course, it takes you a while to come here. Several weeks, in fact. As much as you try to rise above it all, to convince yourself that this is just another place (your favourite, once), there is no denying that there is a certain weight that hangs here. You wish you could just shrug it off -- that this could be your sanctuary from the city, once again, but this place is inhabited by ghosts, and you can’t seem to put them to rest.

You wonder what became of that girl, the girl who still haunts this place. The one who could pick herself up and brush herself off, who could be denied again and again, but would continue undeterred. The girl who could chase after Naomi and demand that she be brave, because she was brave once, too. The girl who could cradle her bruised heart in her hands and offer it up fearlessly over and over, and know that if it broke, she had the strength to put it all back together again.

As much as you hope that you still carry her with you, you know that she is probably just gone, that you left her here by the lake. And it makes you wonder, sometimes, if you took her for granted, if you took advantage of her resilience. You let her go up in a flame of a burning passion, and then watched her slowly be extinguished.

And of course, it was always so easy to make Naomi the villain. Your mum thought she was, so did Katie. Everyone has always seen you as the passive one, but you were the one that pursued relentlessly, and later held on longer than you should. In hindsight, you think that perhaps you underestimated your own tenacity, your thirst for reinvention, because the truth is one you think you’ve always known -- that Naomi was a creature hell bent on self-destruction, and somewhere, somehow, you had willingly let her take you down with her.

You’d hoped perhaps that a phoenix would rise from the ashes, but in truth, in the end you simply took your demons on a tour of the world, and still feel them smouldering at your core.

You open your oversized bag and pull out vodka and your tin of spliff and resign yourself to the fact that it was no accident that you found yourself here today. Five years since you lit the fuse, you think it is time to start rebuilding.

You inhale steadily, and as the smoke fills your lungs, it feels like an exorcism of sorts.

\---

 


	3. light and time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, this chapter is far shorter than I anticipated, or rather, it's half done. given i've been so slow in writing and posting this, I thought I'd at least get these measly 600 or so words up, and revise the chapter to full length when and if i ever actually write it.

Effy had taken your photograph once, and in true Effy style you hadn’t even realised it at the time.  A long time afterwards she sat down beside you, on the hill outside Naomi’s townhouse, where you had been taking long swigs from a brown paper bag, and showed it to you. 

In it you are tip-toed on the steps of Roundview, obnoxious blue cardigan and yellow headband clashing with your toffee apple hair.  You are the only one in focus, standing still as a sentinel awash in a distorted sea of bodies, with your eyes fixed on something in amongst the blur.

“Do you know about the first photograph ever taken?” she’d asked you in that otherworldly tone of voice that, by then, you could recognise meant she was fried.

You hummed no and shook your head, and she took a drag of her newly lit spliff, held the smoke in her mouth and let her head loll back as she exhaled.

“It was in France, of course”, she continued with an ethereal grin as she handed the joint to you. “It was taken with a sort of modified camera obscura.”

You’d nodded and stayed silent, wondering where this oblique narrative was going to take you.

“The film took almost an hour to expose,” she explained. “The camera was pointed out over a busy marketplace, at hundreds and hundreds of people hurrying around, but when the picture was developed, the market was empty.  All the people had disappeared.  They were all moving too fast to be captured by the film.  The only person in the photograph was a single man who was having his shoes shined.  He was the only one standing in one place long enough to be shown.”

It was then that she’d handed you the photograph.

“Is that a true story?” you asked without looking up.

“Yes.”

You looked down gravely at the image of you cradled in your hands, “Then what does that make me?”

“Unwavering,” she stated with a fierce sort of calm, her eyes fixed to your profile.

“Stubborn,” you interjected, still focussed on the photograph.

She smiled then, in your periphery. “Perhaps,” she conceded, not unkindly, and looked away.

“A photograph is just a drawing made out of light and time,” she continued after long minutes. “You think they capture the truth of a thing, but all they really do is crystallise an instant that is already gone.”

“That’s a bit fucking bleak,” you countered.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But it’s true.  They offer no context, no before or after,” she paused then, to look at you sidelong.  “No hint at what’s outside of the frame.”

“What _is_ outside the frame?” you asked, your eyes on hers.

“Usually the people who are paying attention,” she’d offered with a wry smile, and turned away.

“And what are you paying attention to?” you asked, getting her meaning.

She nodded her head at the photograph, “You.”

Taken aback by her honestly, you’d faltered, “What about me?”

“You’re stuck,” she told you simply, but her voice was gentle.

The simple observation hit you like a punch in the chest.

You exhaled uncomfortably, staring at the grass.  “Yeah, and you’ve given me proof,” you noted, and waved the photo she’d given you in the air. She’d just shrugged and turned away again.

The wind picked up then, and you’d shivered and wrapped the hood of your top up around your ears.  You could see her growing restless, so you spoke up one last time, surprised by how small your voice was when you ventured to say, “Just tell me what I should do.”

She rose to her feet then, placing a cool, steady hand on your shoulder as she departed.

“I don’t know, Ems,” she all but whispered. “You’ll figure it out.”


End file.
